When the privacy mode feature was first rolled out in Mozilla Firefox, you could open only one window – private mode window or regular window. Earlier this month, Firefox made changes so that you can open both types of windows at the same. The private mode window shows a purple colored Firefox button on the top-left, while regular window shows an orange colored Firefox button. But now you can open the private mode and regular mode side-by-side in different tabs in the same window using the Private Tab extension for Firefox. This makes it very convenient to use the private mode inside Firefox. You do not have to switch from one window to another.
You can download and install the Private Tab extension from the Mozilla add-on website. Because the API has been recently made available in Firefox version 20, this extension works only in Firefox version 20 and later. This extension does not require you to restart the web browser, so you can start using it right away.
After the installation of the Private Tab extension, you can just click on the orange colored Firefox button and select New Private Tab to open a private tab. You can also use the hotkey Ctrl + Alt + P to open a new private tab. If you have enabled the menubar, then you can select File → New Private Tab. This would open a new private tab. If you switch to this tab, you can see the Firefox button on top-left would change into purple color to indicate that it is a private mode tab.
Not only that, you can also convert any tab into a private tab at the click of your mouse button. To convert a tab into a private tab, just right-click on that tab and select Private Tab or use the hotkey Ctrl + Alt + V when that tab is in focus. In the same way, you can turn a private tab into a regular tab.
The Private Tab extension for Firefox makes it very flexible to use the privacy mode and switch from private mode to regular mode in this popular web browser. You can turn any tab into a private mode tab and use it without worrying that any data is stored on your computer. However if you accidentally switch a private mode tab into a regular tab, then the data might be stored on your computer defeating the whole purpose of the private mode browsing.
You can download the Private Tab extension from https://addons.mozilla.org/.